


Muddy Waters

by local-cryptid (dontmindme_imafangirl)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Captain America: The First Avenger, Steve Rogers Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-26
Updated: 2017-11-26
Packaged: 2019-02-07 02:33:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12831471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dontmindme_imafangirl/pseuds/local-cryptid
Summary: Tumblr prompt: I've always wondered what Steve was doing in that train right after Bucky fell off. Plus, fast forward to when Bucky pulled Steve out of the river in TWS. What would've happened if Bucky stayed there until Steve regained his senses?He's used to having a warmth on his side, a hand on his shoulder, the sound of a chuckle and blue eyes preening at him.But it's been years since those eyes last set their gaze upon him, since he had a person to call hishome.Steve isn't sure what home is anymore.Not without Bucky.





	Muddy Waters

**Author's Note:**

> The title & lyrics found in the fic are from the song [Muddy Waters by LP](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ss8t7a8n0U4).

_We are kneeling at the rivers edge and tempting_   
_All the steps to follow closer right behind_   
_Is it only when you feel a part is empty_   
_That it’s gnawing at the corners of your mind_

_I will ask you for mercy_   
_I will come to you blind_   
_What you’ll see is the worst me_   
_Not the last of my kind_

 

******

It’s a simple story, the one of how they met.

He was a small scrawny kid, trying and failing to be social one too many times.

It wasn’t until another hand extended to him, followed by a bright smile from a boy around his age, missing one of his front teeth yet smiling brighter than anything he’d ever seen.

“I’m James, but everyone calls me Bucky!” the grinning boy chirped, “Who are you?”

He stuttered for a second.

“Steve. Everyone calls me Steve?”

Bucky laughed, gripping Steve’s hand in a firm handshake, imitating the one they’d seen adults do in formal greetings.

“Do you want to be friends Steve?”

Steve nodded. He’d very much like to be friends with the boy as bright as sunlight.

And that was it. That’s how they first met.

A couple years straight and they were inseperable. Steve’s mother cared for Bucky like her son, Bucky’s parents embracing the new addition to their family in the form of a petite blonde kid.

That’s how they grew up. Hand in hand, protecting one another, sharing comic books and secrets, lying about curfews to their parents and having each other’s back.

Steve isn’t sure when that line came along.   
He thinks it was sometime after his first fight, whilst he was sporting a black eye, and Bucky a split lip for intervening.

Steve kept on apologising, telling Bucky to just not get involved in fights that weren’t his, to not get hurt unnecesarily. Bucky laughed at that and waved his hand dismissedly, insisting that any of Steve’s fights would automatically be his-they were always for a good cause anyway.

“Don’t forget-I’m with you ‘till the end of the line.”

So the little children grew. They went from antsy teenagers into full-fledged adults, ready to fight and serve their country in the war spreading across the globe.

Steve always regretted not spending more time with Bucky before he left. He understands that with the circumstances as they were-him suddenly getting accepted into the army, suddenly being experimented on; and changing into _this_ -correspondence with his childhood friend would be hard.

He figured it’ll be okay. The war will end, and with an innocent glee he prayed he’ll meet Bucky on the railway station, bruised and battered but overall okay and _alive_ and he’ll see him grin that lopsided smirk of his and Steve would snort and roll his eyes but bring Bucky in for the tightest hug he could give him.

But then came the news.  
The man sitting behind a desk, announcing Bucky’s probable death to Steve as just another piece of casual news, as if the entire ground Steve was just standing on didn’t break in half and let the earth engulf him whole.

It’s a feeling Steve can’t, _won't_ ever forget. As if his entire heart got torn apart, the tears he managed to stop from spilling threatening to burst, chest heaving and suddenly he was back to being the small heaving kid he used to be, only this time there’s no hand rubbing his back, handing him an inhaler and whispering words of reassurance as he calmed.

This time he was alone.

He vowed right then and there that he’d do everything in his power to honour Bucky’s memory, to keep fighting through the pain, through the loss. 

 

He never expected to find the same person he was mourning, strapped down to a table and looking to Steve with wide eyes.

Steve couldn’t help but forget about the surrounding battle, even if just for a moment, a mere second to bring his hands around his best friend and hug him tighter than ever before, hiding into the crook of his neck and feeling the pulse there on his cheek.

*****

And so it went on, fighting battle after battle, shoulder by shoulder, talking across battlefields with a simple look.

“It’s impossible!” Their friends would shriek, “it’s like telepathy-you two are having whole conversation without opening your mouths!”

They just laughed, not even trying to explain-was there even a simple way to explain the connection you feel to someone you’ve spent your entire life with?

Some nights, the quiet ones, when they’d have time to just be, Steve would find Bucky by cliffs or rivers, looking up to the night sky with a sagacious look; there’d be the gleam of stars on his skin, bright eyes tinted darker in the moonlight, and Steve’s heart would leap before settling back in his chest, whispering to him-

_This is your person._

They’d sit and talk for hours, about life, about childhood memories, about the war and their fears. He could never think he’ll lose Bucky, not again, he couldn’t go through the same sorrow he felt when he thought he was gone.

That time, on that mountaintop; he still remembers Bucky’s smile, soft and private, that glint in his eye that reassured Steve that ‘ _we’ll make it out alive, like we always do_ ’.

He remembers wanting to hug him, to let the words slip from his mouth, a soft ‘thank you, for being here, for being with me, for grasping my hand and never letting go’-he decided not to with a quick shake of his head, knowing there would always be the chance of saying it after.

But after never came.

The next thing he knew was Bucky’s scream as he hung onto the railings, he remembers his own shrieks, his efforts to reach Bucky to pull him up, he remembers Bucky’s face, the quiet resignation, that damn conversation they had with just a gaze.

Bucky was telling this was it. He had to accept it. Steve was saying he’d never do that.

When he saw his best friend, his person, fall into a white abyss; his world went blank.

His body run on autopilot, his mind empty and vision blurry.  
The next thing he knew he was curled into a corner of the train, a spew of mauled bodies, wounds he never remembered inflicting, his blonde locks dyed red on the tips he was pulling with bloodied fingers.

That’s how his team found him, numb and shaking, unable to even put up a front.

They understood, or they tried to at least; Steve wasn’t the only person to lose someone in this war. They lost friends, loved ones, family and lovers. And when Bucky was gone, they too lost a friend.

But it was so much more than that for Steve.

Bucky was his everything. He was childhood crushes and butterflies in his stomach, laughter with missing teeth when the baby ones started falling out. It was the strong arms that’d lift him off the ground after a fight gone bad, the heat over his cheeks and chest when he first noticed the beginning of a stubble on his best friend’s jaw and the muscle building up under his clothes.

It was the complete heartache and tears at the thought of his best friend dying, the tears of joy when he recovered him again, when he found him and clenched his hands once more.

Bucky was Steve’s world.

 

And he was just thrown out into space without an oxygen tank.

*****

There’s not much that he knows.

There’s even fewer things he remembers.  
There’s one recurrent memory in his head; it’s cold, and his body’s trembling with fear, or exhaustion, or both.

At some point the fear turns to an eerie calm, and his body stops shaking-he’s falling, he thinks.

As he falls there’s an icy blue in his vision, laced with a voice he’s _supposed_ to remember, so raw with emotion it makes his heart leap-

One moment he’s screaming, reaching out, and the next he’s on solid ground, vision blurry and white tainted with red, a mind-numbing pain coursing through his back and arms, setting every muscle, every tendon ablaze with jolts of electricity.

He could remember mumbling someone’s name over and over, even as each nerve in his body jolted, as the gaping gap on his side was switched to heavy metal, even as his mind felt like a broken record-he kept calling out a name.

But then the memory’s gone, if it even is one.

He has no memories.  
No emotions.

He’s no person.

Just a killing machine.

He knows nobody, has no _friends_.

Only missions.

“Good morning soldier.”

He takes a breath, eyes opening.

“Ready to comply.”

****

He finds himself up on a bridge, gun in his hand, eyes set on target.

He locks eyes with an icy blue, the very same one that’s been haunting the beginning of his shattered memories.

The blur around the face that tried to save him clears, the blue stripe toggles down into a pair of eyes looking straight at him, begging, _pleading_ him to put a name to them.

“Bucky?” the voice asks and it’s so familiar, it’s a lifetime of sounds, he remembers it laughing and calling this name over and over, in a multitude of situations;

But this name isn’t his.   
He has no name.

He only has a mission.

******

Steve locked eyes with the man he’d been fighting, his eyes widening when the assailant took off his mask and looked towards him, the face Steve would remember for a lifetime looking back at him.

It didn’t matter that decades had gone by.  
It didn’t matter that his hair was longer, his eyes haunted, his jaw clenched.

Steve would recognise him anywhere.

“Bucky?”

He called the name by instinct, and in the way the man’s eyes widened even for a mere fraction of a second, Steve knew it was second nature to him too, to respond to that name, to turn with a smile or sometimes a coy grin even, responding with a teasing ‘Yes, Stevie?’

It reminded him of that time, a few days after Bucky was presumed dead, after Steve had to give up searching, wishing, willing.

He sat in that very same bar they once went to, only this time he was alone, no Bucky nudging him with his elbow, no friends that’d laugh along their antics.

It was just him and a bottle of Jack, until a pair of footsteps walked in, heels clacking onto wood until a figure came to sit beside him.

 _“You’re mourning”_ she said, her statement laced with sympathy.   
_“I am. Of course I am, it’s-it’s so ironic”_ , he breathed a bitter laugh, gazing to the side to meet Peggy’s frown, _“So many years of friendship, and I never had the guts to tell him I loved him.”_

_And now it’s too late._

But he’s here, he’s here right now, and Steve could tell that Bucky recognised him too.

But the recognition he saw in those eyes was gone in an instant, eyebrows furrowing as he charged towards Steve.

“Who the hell is Bucky?” he asked as he charged ahead, voice rough, cold.

This is Bucky.

But it’s not _his_ Bucky.

 

****

He’s standing face to face with him now.

He knows this is his Bucky, the one he grew up with, the one that ruffled his hair and cleaned up his wounds after fights, the one that’d bump shoulders with him and hug him when his anxiety got the better of him.

It’s the person he knows, but at the same time, it’s not.

Bucky- _The Winter Soldier_ , is standing across him, expression blank, the safety on his guns clicked off and his body stiff, ready for a fight.

“Please don’t make me do this”, Steve pleads, trying to look for any sign of recognition in his eyes.

But there is none.  
And so Steve fights.

He tried to avoid hurting him, tried to stay on the defence only while not abandoning his mission, but Bucky persisted, landing blows and firing his guns at any critical point of Steve’s body he could find, gritting his teeth when his blows where met with the clanking metal of Steve’s shield.

There was no choice but to fight, to land heavier punches, to push Bucky’s arms down and stun him, even if the sound of his screams broke Steve into a million pieces, knowing that _he’s_ the cause of this pain, that the voice he knew once now yelled and screamed, eyes locked onto him with a menace.

Steve couldn’t resent Bucky even when he shot him, the pain registering moments after blood seeped through his abdomen and over his suit, the blue turning burgundy as his limbs weakened.

He couldn’t resent him even when, after freeing him from the metal scraps that broke of the helicarrier and trapped him, Bucky’s first instinct was to get up and attack him, teeth bared and metal fist raised.

He couldn’t resent him even when he felt his consciousness slip, punch after punch raising on his cheeks, the blood loss making him see double.

You can’t resent the one you love.  
Not when you’d willingly lay your life down for them to step on, in hopes of catching a glimpse of their soft gaze when they walk past.

“You’re my mission”, he said.

“Then finish it”, Steve breathed, “because I’m with you, ‘till the end of the line.”

*****

Mission.  
Target.

End.

Mission report: Undergoing

mission  
mis  
miss-

Steve.  
Steve Rogers.

Mission.  
Stevie.

James Bu-B-  
Jabes-  
James-Barnes-Buchanan-

James Buchanan Barnes.

Buck-  
Bucky?

There’s a tug at the back of his brain and it _hurts_ dammit, every single fiver of his being is begging him to stop, to not mess with memories that shouldn’t be there in the first place, but his mission-his-his _Steve_ is still talking, still pulling at the locked up Pandora’s box hidden so deep and it’s unlocking slowly at first but now it stings, it’s like there’s a litany of cables scattered in his head electrocuting him one by one and he just wants them to _stop_ all he wants is to just _stop-_

“You know me.” the man says.

“No I don’t!” he screams, fist colliding with the man’s shield.

“Bucky”, he says that damned, cursed name again, breathing heavily, “You’ve known me your whole life.”

Another punch, this time meeting the man’s face.

“Your name, is James Buchanan Barnes.”

His brain _hurts_ , the sound of that voice, of this name makes him wince, and he lunges forward.

“Shut up!”

Another punch.

The man falls, gets up, stumbles, breathing deeply and struggling to get his bearings.

Then he does the one thing he wasn’t expecting him to do.

He drops his shield, the only barrier between Bucky’s attacks and him, arms falling to his side in surrender.

“I’m not gonna fight you. You’re my friend.”

He doesn’t let the man, the mission, change its mind, before he dashes to him, grabbing him by the waist and dropping him onto the side of the helicarrier, glass shards seeping into both their skins.

And so he punches.

He yells.

He hurts him. His target.  
It’s what he’s good at.

It’s what he’s supposed to do.

But then come pictures, images of the bloodied man beneath him, only younger, smiling, holding the hand of a boy he cannot recognise but feels so oddly familiar and there’s a surge of emotions he doesn’t want, doesn’t need and it’s all too much-

“You’re my mission!” he screams, trying to find his bearing between all the jumbled thoughts, landing hit after hit onto the face that’s so oddly familiar, even with the purple bruises and split bloodied lips.

There’s tears pooling in the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill until-

“Then finish it. Because I’m with you ’till the end of the line.”

It’s Steve.

It’s his Steve.

The pain halts and there’s just numbness trickling in, recognition now pulsing in his blood as his fist is left to hang mid-air, a panic surging in his chest.

There’s no time to comprehend what happened, the next moment finds breaking glass and the limp body- _Steve’s_ , Steve’s body, sliding down with no warning, Bucky grabs at it pointlessly and it brings back images of a hand reaching out for his, Steve’s eyes locked onto his, glassy from shock and unshed tears, begging Bucky to just hold on, to not let go but it’s too late and he slips, slips just like Steve just did, falling into infinite depths-

He doesn’t think it through.

He jumps, and pleads whatever forces are out there to just make it in time.  
One last repent for the sins he never wanted to commit.

****

His mind isn’t exactly clear, but it’s clearer.

You know that feeling?  
That post-shock numbness, the calm that stills your very soul?

Bucky thinks that’s what this feeling is.

There’s metal scraps around him, some even still set ablaze as they fall into murky muddy waters, the very same ones he’d thrown himself into, swimming to shore with another body laying limp in his arms, but with a pulse albeit weakened, breathing even if raspy and short.

He lays the body down onto the ground, taking a moment to breathe, exertion overcoming his every muscle.

With a grunt, he nudges the unconscious person to their side, landing loud thuds to their back with the heel of his palm until they cough out water, breaths somewhat easing but eyes still pulled shut.

It’s for the best, he figures, it’s for the best he won’t open his eyes.

This way he won’t have to see what’s become of Bucky.

He ripped up some fabrics from his clothes, wrapping them tightly around the mans’ midsection, hoping it’s enough to still the bleeding that turned his outfit red.

There’s not much else he can do after that.

He could leave-he _should_ leave, he knows that, his fight-or-flight instinct kicking in.

But there’s something, a voice he can’t comprehend somewhere in his chest that’s begging him to stay.

And so he does.

He takes a good look at the man’s face as he sits besides him, back resting against a tree log.

It’s the same face he remembers.

The memories are blurry at best, but this face-for some reason it’s clear like sea water, the messy blond hair, the long lashes, the sturdy build and arched eyebrows.

It’s Steve.

Steve is the person in his memories, the one that tried to pull him away from imminent death, the one that screamed as he fell.

He remembers a younger, scrawnier Steve, eyes crinkling and grin wide and bright, as he held a sketchbook in his one hand and a pencil in another; the drawing on the paper looked to be someone he recognised, a face he _knows_ but younger, hair pulled back and half-lidded eyes looking to the side.  
It’s him, he figures, Steve was drawing him, showing him the drawing proudly after Bucky commented on how amazing his art skills were.

He remembers a first aid kid, gauzes and flasks of whiskey in his breast pocket, laughing as he patted the soaked fabric onto bloodied knuckles and ripped skin.

The face resting besides him now is different, older; but still so similar.

He went to put a hand over the black eye Steve was sporting, but halted.

The hand wasn’t made of flesh and bone.

It was whirring metal and rods.

It was dripping blood, as red as the star on his shoulder.

This hand didn’t deserve to touch anyone.

He didn’t deserve to be there.

He made to get up, grunting with effort as all of his own wounds started to put strain on his body, but the moment he got up, he heard a groan, saw a fluttering of eyelids as a warm blue turned to greet him.

Steve tried to get up, frantically throwing a hand towards Bucky’s way.

“Don’t-“ he groaned, “Don’t go-“

He stood still, locking eyes with Steve.

Slowly he sat back down, breaking eye contact to look to the sky, darkened with smoke from the fire.

“I hurt you.”

Steve shook his head, sighing.

“It wasn’t your fault. What they did to you, they brain-washed you-that wasn’t you.”

“But that doesn’t change the fact that I did what I did.”

“It doesn’t affect the actions themselves, no. But it was nothing you did by choice. You weren’t in control then.”

Bucky huffed a laugh, his lips strained as they forced a smile.

“Am I in control now?”

Steve huffed, eyes locked on Bucky even if he didn’t dare turn to face him, locks of hair falling to his side.

“You’re not trying to fight me, are you?”  
They sat in silence for a while.

Steve let out a long sigh, back hunching forward.

“This brings back memories” he breathed, looking to Bucky for any sign of recognition, “We’d sit by riversides at night and talk until morning. It was our way of getting through the day”, he added when noticing the questioning gaze.

“You know”, Steve continued, voice more somber, looking to the graveyard of metal the water had become, “I spent days looking for you. I begged everyone to go back down there, look for any sign of you, but there was nothing. Not even a drop of blood.”

“They said it’s because the snow piled up, but I couldn’t just leave it at that, not when I didn’t even have a body to bury, to mourn for..” Steve’s voice broke, the forced smile on his lips falling.

Bucky turned to look at him, but made no attempt to move, to wrap an arm around his shoulders and comfort him like they did before.

Steve put a hand through his hair, laughing at the absurdity of it all as he continued to speak with a shaky voice.

“I loved you. God dammit, all these years and and I never told you when I could’ve-I’m sorry.”

“I-“ Bucky started, voice hoarse from un-use, “I think I did too.”

Steve’s breath hitched.

“I cant remember much…I’m trying but everything’s so jumbled up. But I loved you too. I’m sure I did.”

Neither of them knows what to say.

There’s a still, the sound of water splashing on shore and scraps of metal grazing over one another as some get washed up in front of them.

The sun’s getting low, pink hues clashing with dark as the light fades, and they breathe in each other’s presence.

“So…now what?” Steve asked.

“Now I leave, and you go back.”

“Back?”

Bucky nodded. “Back to where you should be. Where you belong.”

Steve contemplated his next words.

“You could come back with me. You can belong there too.”

Bucky smiled, soft and gentle and reminding Steve of all that he’s missed.

“I can’t do that Steve. I don’t-I. Don’t even know who I am right now. I don’t belong.”

“I could help you.”

“I know.”

There was a sense of resignation in both their voices, knowing what the end would be but postponing it as far as they could push it.

There’s that unspoken communication again, Bucky’s plead of ‘let me do this on my own’ and the more secret, more well hidden ‘ _I’m afraid’_ and Steve wants to say a million things but nods instead, their conversation fluid, found in the way they breathe and look at one another, like long-lost lovers that found each other after millenia, only to be separated again.

Steve shifted to face Bucky, sticking out a hand with his pinky finger raised.

Something clicked in Bucky as he follows Steve’s lead, locking his pinky finger with his.

This was their thing, back when they were little kids and made that promise to one another, the promise to always be there, to keep each other from harms’ way, locking pinkies something they swore to be the highest level of an oath they could take at the time.

“Promise me,” Steve started, looking down to their linked hands, “Promise me that you’ll come to me when you need me. That you won’t try and carry everything by yourself, not again, not this time. I..I won’t force you to come with. But know it’s not a cross you have to carry by yourself.”

Bucky sighed.  
“I promise.”

“Good. And remember-“

“I’m with you, ‘till the end of the line.”

*****

_It is not clear why we choose the fire pathway_   
_Where we end is not the way that we had planned_   
_All the spirits gather 'round like its our last day_   
_To get across you know we’ll have to raise the sand_

_I will ask you for mercy_   
_I will come to you blind_   
_What you’ll see is the worst me_   
_I'm not the last of my kind._

**Author's Note:**

> So my best friend send me this prompt ages ago and I never got around to finishing it until now ;u; it was so much fun to work on it though, and tbh I really need to write more Stucky fics bc it's one of my main ships that I love and their whole dynamic is just,,,amazing ;;
> 
> (Also LP? Is iconic, ive been listening to muddy waters & when we're high on repeat for the past two days lol)
> 
> Hope you liked this!   
> If you'd like to send in another prompt, or just talk about metal arms and shields, [here](http://dontmindme-imafangirl.tumblr.com) is my tumblr! <3
> 
> p.s I might remove the lyrics from the fic at a later point, I'm not sure how much it fits to have them there but thought id give it a go ^^'


End file.
